Assessing for Understanding By John L. Brown

This is the third How-To in the series, Teaching for Understanding in the Visual and Performing Arts, based on the principles of Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTigue.

The Need for a Balanced Approach to Assessment

In this ongoing series we are exploring the implications of Understanding by Design (UbD) for visual and performing arts educators. To this point, we have emphasized two key ideas: (1) Successful visual and performing arts instruction has always emphasized student understanding, rather than formulaic knowledge-recall learning; (2) Effective education in the arts aligns itself powerfully with the design principles of UbD, including emphasis upon a "backwards design" process that begins with the identification of desired results (Stage One); moves to a multi-faceted, "balanced" assessment process to monitor student achievement of those results (Stage Two); and concludes with the design of instructional and learning activities that promote student achievement of desired results as well as effective performance on various assessments to confirm student understanding (Stage Three).

This third article explores assessment issues associated with Stage Two. Our controlling question for this particular article becomes: How can we collect and analyze assessment evidence to determine the extent to which students have achieved our desired results? In "unpacking" this question, the authors of Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, recommend that we consider the following issues (2004, Understanding by Design Professional Development Workbook, p. 136):

Stage 2—To what extent do the assessments provide valid, reliable, and sufficient measures of the desired results?

Consider: Are:
• students asked to exhibit their understanding through authentic performance tasks?
• appropriate criterion-based rubrics used to judge student products and performances?
• a variety of appropriate assessment formats provided as additional evidence of learning?
• students encouraged to self-assess?

The Metaphor of the Photo Album

Wiggins and McTighe present a controlling metaphor to summarize these ideas. They suggest that great educational assessment must entail the teacher and students’ collaboration on a "photo album" to monitor students’ progress. They also affirm that when assessment is limited to a one-shot "photograph," e.g., a single test, quiz, or isolated product or performance, we lose the nuances of a more balanced, comprehensive approach. For example, one-shot assessments do not allow us to monitor and assess longitudinal progress. They capture student performance in a single point in time. Above all, they deprive students of the opportunity to self-assess and self-monitor their progress over the long haul.

To celebrate some good news, let’s begin by acknowledging how effectively successful teachers of the visual and performing arts already model and apply these controlling principles, especially the concept of a photo-album, balanced approach to assessing student achievement. Education in the arts, for example, is innately performance-based. Whether engaged in the visual or performing arts, students consistently receive coaching and instructional support to exhibit their understanding via authentic performance tasks. We need only consider such experiences as recitals, culminating presentations, dramatic performances, gallery exhibitions, and the rich other formats in which students of the arts are asked to present culminating products and performances. We can also take heart in the almost universal practice among arts educators of requiring students to develop and maintain arts portfolios that capture work products and artifacts as well as student self-assessments and self-reflections.

Effective Assessment in the Visual and Performing Arts

The visual and performing arts, therefore, demand authenticity. In effect, students begin in an apprentice or mentee role, operating under the guidance and tutelage of the master teacher. Ultimately, the student grows to assume the mantle of professional, demonstrating their proficiency and understanding through climactic presentations and performances that reflect some level of professional competence.

Similarly, Wiggins and McTighe’s second consideration, i.e., appropriate criterion-based rubrics are used to judge student products and performances, has long been a mainstay of effective arts education. Typically, criteria for any visual or performing arts product or presentation are presented up-front by the teacher, with students examining models and exemplars of desired outcomes and applying evaluation criteria to critique them. These models and exemplars can range from classic artifacts to the examination of student-generated examples.

Great visual and performing arts instructors have also consistently integrated a variety of appropriate assessment formats as additional evidence of learning. To begin with, as we have suggested in previous articles in this series, arts education almost inevitably emphasizes vehicles and processes for students to express their understanding via the "six facets of understanding" identified by Wiggins and McTighe. Arts instructors coach and mentor students via scaffolded learning activities that are carefully aligned with identified evaluation criteria.

In the process, students exhibit their growing capacity to express faceted-based understanding by: (1) explaining what they are doing and why they are doing it as they respond to an artistic task or challenge; (2) interpreting their world and expressing their conclusions through various artistic media; (3) applying emergent skills and procedures in independent and self-generated ways as part of their artistic expression; (4) analyzing conflicting and contradictory approaches and points of view as they observe and discuss their approach to an artistic work product or process vs. the other perspectives presented by their classmates; (5) demonstrating a capacity for empathy, exploring the feelings and sensibilities of others who may be taking a different approach to artistic expression; and (6) consistently growing in their ability to express and demonstrate self-knowledge as a result of artistic creativity, sustained self-assessment, and shared peer feedback.

The final consideration presented by Wiggins and McTighe, i.e., the need for students to be encouraged to self-assess, is the cornerstone of all great arts education. Consider, for example, the following scenarios:

1. Students engage in peer review and critique sessions as they present the paintings they have created at the conclusion of a unit.
2. After an orchestral performance, students explore with their instructor what worked, what was especially successful, and what might be modified in future performances.
3. At the conclusion of each day in a course on modern dance, students reflect with their instructor on what they have learned that day, how their technical proficiency has grown, and ways they might modify or refine their technique during future classes.
4. Prior to beginning a unit on urban photography depicting "life on the street," students tour a gallery exhibition of noted urban photographers, reflecting on their aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual reactions to the works they observe.

All of these scenarios do two things: (1) They reinforce the very clear presence of student self-reflection and self-assessment as a fundamental building block of great arts education; and (2) they remind us that one of the great and enduring benefits of arts education is its capacity for stimulating students’ capacity for self-knowledge. Every successful arts classroom, in fact, emphasizes students’ engagement in the process of self-assessment. Great arts instruction, inevitably results in students’ heightened capacity for revisiting, revising, rethinking, and refining their artistic prowess as well as their insights into the processes of creation and self-expression.

G.R.A.S.P.S. Culminating Performances in the Arts

Finally, we assert that effective arts education always incorporates what Wiggins and McTighe call "G.R.A.S.P.S." culminating performance tasks. Such tasks, the authors propose, function as climactic end-points for units and/or courses. They are decidedly "authentic" since students—as they inevitably must within the visual and performing arts—are required to move beyond teacher modeling and guided practice toward independent application and decision-making. Every successful culminating or summative product and/or performance in the visual and performing arts includes key G.R.A.S.P.S. design elements:

• G=Real-world goals aligned with specific standards-based criteria
• R=A real-world or authentic role (e.g., artist, dancer, musician, actor)
• A=An authentic, real-world audience
• S=A scenario or situation parallel to circumstances experienced by professionals in the field being studied
• P=Products, presentations, and/or performances that exhibit the criteria and traits expected of artists within the field
• S=Standards for evaluation and self-reflection that guide and inform students’ decision-making, problem-solving, and self-expression processes

We can conclude, therefore, that educators in the visual and performing arts are naturally inclined to understand and apply the Stage Two assessment principles articulated by Understanding by Design. In fact, their practices can stand as benchmarks for educators in other content areas where there may be less inclination to use a balanced and complete “photo album” approach to assessment.

In the next and final article in this series, we will move toward Stage Three of Understanding by Design, exploring what this framework has to say about designing teaching and learning activities that promote desired results. Once again, we will discover that educators in the field of the arts have long been practicing many of the strategies and processes recommended by Wiggins and McTighe.